Versatile, Inexpensive Support Plates for the Laboratory One problem commonly encountered in both research and instructional laboratories is the lack of supports for items such as heating mantles, steam baths, and magnetic stirrers. Students in many laboratories use wooden blocks or textbooks to adjust the height of apparatus, hut that method suffers from an obvious lack of versatility. Adjustable laboratory jacks (up to a maximum height of approximately 30 em) are more versatile, hut their cost precludes their use in undergraduate instructional laboratories. Cast-iron rings and plates are the most widely used supports in instructional laboratories, but they too have one major drawback. Their small size and shape make then an unstable and awkward support for heating mantles having a flat-bottomed aluminum case and for large objects such as steam baths and stirring hot plates. I wish to describe the construction of support plates which eliminate the dimdvantages inherent in the supporting methods mentioned above. These plates are easily constructed from cast-iron support plates and 20 X 20-cm pieces of 3/4-in. plywood. The plywood is mounted to the imn plate by drilling two 3/16-in.holes in the plate and fastening the plywood board with two 1in. X # 8 round-head woad screws. If the iron plate is the variety having S/s-in.hales, 3/ls~in. fender washers will be required. These support plates have been in use in both the instructional organic and research laboratories during the past academic year, and there is universal agreement from bothstudents and facultythat they are far superior to rings and cart-iron plates because the" are large enounh to accommodate the lareest stirrine hot d a t e or steam hath. Also. the" are more versatile
items Thomas D. Harris SUNY at Fredonia Fredonia. NY 14063
256
Journal of Chemical Education
